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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to intervene in an appeal of a lawsuit accusing the National Security Agency of illicit spying on millions of Americans communicating with foreigners.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit in 2006 on behalf of journalists, scholars, criminal defense attorneys and Islamic-Americans, had sought review of a 2-1 decision last summer by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to throw out its case.

The ACLU obtained a victory at the trial court level in August 2006. A federal judge in Michigan ruled that the NSA's once-secret terrorist surveillance program, which operated without court orders, "ran roughshod" over Americans' constitutional rights Americans and violated federal wiretapping law.

But the Sixth Circuit overturned that ruling on narrow procedural grounds. It determined that the ACLU and the plaintiffs didn't have legal standing to bring the suit in the first place because they hadn't shown adequate evidence that they have been "personally" subject to the eavesdropping program. The judges did not, however, take a position whether the spying program itself was legal.

The Supreme Court's decision, which arrived without comment, lets that opinion stand.

"Although we are deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court's refusal to review this case, it is worth noting that today's action says nothing about the case's merits and does not suggest in any way an endorsement of the lower court's decision," said Steven Shapiro, the ACLU's legal director.

The Supreme Court's inaction does not, however, directly affect about 40 cases pending before a federal judge in the Ninth Circuit appeals court in San Francisco.

One of them is the high-profile suit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, which is accused of opening up its network illegally to the NSA. That case and others like it have prompted a fierce fight in Congress over whether to immunize corporations who assisted government spies from such legal action.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:23 p.m. PST to add more information about the Senate votes and the upcoming House action, and at 2:56 p.m. PST to add information about the final vote.

In a setback for privacy and civil liberties groups, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted to protect telephone and Internet companies from lawsuits alleging illegal cooperation with government spy agencies.

By a 31-67 vote, senators failed to approve a Democratic-sponsored amendment that would have allowed lawsuits against AT&T and other telecommunication companies accused of illegal activities to continue. Because the broader bill being considered currently includes retroactive immunity for those companies--something that President Bush had personally requested--scores of pending legal challenges, including high-profile cases against AT&T and Verizon, are likely to disappear if the entire Congress ultimately approves it.

No Republicans voted for the amendment, but 18 Democrats joined the body's Republicans and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman to vote against it. Then, around 3pm PT, the entire Senate voted by a 68-29 margin to approve the legislation with retroactive immunity included.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who cosponsored the unsuccessful amendment with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), said it's dangerous to "grant that retroactive immunity without insisting the courts, as they're designed to do, determine the legality or illegality of this program."

But Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued the immunity is an "essential" part of the bill. "If we permit the carriers who may or may not have participated in this to be sued in court, then the most important partners the government has, the private sector, will be discouraged from assisting us in the future," he said just before the vote.

The bill is designed to replace a temporary expansion of a spy law, known as the Protect America Act, which is set to expire February 16. The Bush administration in recent weeks has been pressuring Congress to make the PAA more expansive and permanent. In addition, the president has threatened to veto any bill that does not fully immunize telephone companies from legal action.

The debate goes back to a New York Times report in late 2005 that the president had authorized the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps, allegedly involving Americans' conversations and Internet communications, without a court order. The news ultimately led to proposed changes to a 1978 law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

Members of both political parties generally agree that some updates to FISA are necessary to reflect changing technologies. What has divided politicians, however, is how much unchecked surveillance authority to give the attorney general and what to do about lawsuits against private companies who have been accused of cooperating with the feds' warrantless eavesdropping regime.

The Senate bill, which has already been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee by a 13-2 vote, contains broad language immunizing not only telephone companies, but Web sites, e-mail providers and more, from lawsuits.

That immunity would apply both to future lawsuits and to any suits filed during the period from September 11, 2001, to January 17, 2007, the day the Justice Department announced that the secret NSA program would be revamped and brought under the scrutiny of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Civil liberties groups were quick to blast the latest vote. Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office, said the move amounted to "a get-out-of-jail-free card" and a "multimillion dollar favor" for the telephone companies. (The ACLU, for its part, has been actively involved in filing such suits.)

The Senate on Tuesday morning also rejected a handful of amendments designed to increase checks on government spy programs.

By a 35-63 vote, politicians defeated a Democratic amendment designed to set a higher legal standard for wiretapping of communications between Americans and their overseas friends, family members, and business colleagues. The pending bill would allow the attorney general to authorize collection of foreign intelligence information without a court warrant for up to a year so long as the target was "reasonably believed to be located outside the United States," but civil liberties groups have argued that's far too permissive.

Republicans and some Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-W.V.), however, said they strongly opposed the proposal, arguing it would make it too difficult to listen in on foreign terrorists who happen to be on U.S. soil.

The Senate also rejected by a 30-68 vote an amendment proposed by Senators Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) that attempted to broker a sort of compromise on the legal immunity question.

That proposal would have "substituted" government attorneys for telecommunications companies being sued, which supporters said would allow court scrutiny of government spying programs to continue without putting corporations in a difficult position. But opponents contended that was a bad idea because the government can already be sued directly and because it would have put "sensitive" intelligence information at risk.

Now that the Senate has approved its version of the legislation, it will still have to be reconciled with the House of Representatives' version, which does not grant immunity to telephone and Internet companies.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the House would be willing to back down on that provision. But with a veto threat looming if a bill is passed without corporate immunity, it seems unlikely that the House will be able to keep its approach intact. An aide to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said leaders are discussing how they will move forward but was unable to provide any details on what options are being considered.

Still, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a co-sponsor of the House's spy law rewrite, issued a statement Tuesday that said the Senate's vote for corporate "amnesty" is not justified by documents about the NSA program supplied by the Bush administration so far.

Some House Democrats signaled, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 28, that they believe the Senate bill is perfectly "satisfactory" and should be approved without any substantial changes.

In a new letter to White House general counsel Fred Fielding, Conyers renewed his request for complete documentation about the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, including "agreements or understandings between the White House, the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency, or any other entity of the Executive Branch and telecommunications companies, Internet service providers, equipment manufacturers, or data processors regarding criminal or civil liability for assisting with or participating in warrantless electronic surveillance program(s)."

News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report

Yet another brawl is brewing among congressional Democrats and the Bush administration over enacting a controversial spy law that would immunize telephone and Internet companies from lawsuits alleging wrongdoing.

With barely a week before the Protect America Act--a six-month-long expansion of electronic surveillance law--expires, the White House has been ratcheting up pressure to renew and further expand that law.

It started Tuesday with a new press release that warned: "The terrorist threat does not expire February 1, and neither should legislation critical to keeping our nation safe."

And it continued on Wednesday by sending Vice President Dick Cheney to deliver a "major policy address" at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. His topic: "why it is so urgent that Congress update the FISA law effective immediately and permanently."

FISA, of course, is shorthand for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The 1978 federal law has occupied much of Congress' and the Bush administration's attention ever since revelations that the president had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, allegedly on Americans, without a warrant as part of a once-secret terrorist surveillance program.

The timeline for debate on the latest bill remains unclear. As of Wednesday afternoon, a vote had not been scheduled, according to a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid on Tuesday offered a monthlong extension of the Protect America Act to give senators more time to hash out a replacement, but Republican leaders objected to the move.

In a letter to President Bush on Wednesday afternoon, Reid made a last-minute plea for cooperation, arguing it was looking increasingly unlikely that both chambers of Congress would be able to pass a consensus version by the end of next week. (The House of Representatives, for its part, has already passed a bill that contains no legal protections for telephone companies.)

"I urge you to announce your public support for a brief extension of current law so that existing authorities are not allowed to expire while we complete work on this important bill," Reid wrote.

Last August, Congress caved to pressure from the Bush administration and signed off on the temporary Protect America Act. That law does things like erase the need for a warrant to spy on communications involving someone "reasonably believed to be outside the United States" and immunize telephone companies from lawsuits alleging illicit spy cooperation going forward. It did not, however, grant retroactive immunity to those companies, thereby wiping out scores of pending lawsuits, including one in California against AT&T.

That's what the Bush administration and prominent Republicans are hoping to achieve this time around. As Cheney told the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, "the law should uphold an important principle: that those who assist the government in tracking terrorists should not be punished with lawsuits."

The Senate Intelligence Committee inched closer to granting that request, passing its version of a FISA rewrite by a 13 to 2 vote last fall. But that bill faces filibuster threats and fierce opposition from a number of leading Democrats, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). His committee passed a competing version of the bill that does not contain legal protections for telephone companies.

"We now have a bill that would allow the government to review more Americans' communications with even less court supervision than before," he said of the Intelligence Committee version.

Leahy and other Democrats have indicated they're willing to accept modifications to the blanket-immunity idea. Some support an amendment that would formally "substitute" government lawyers for telephone companies facing lawsuits, but the Bush administration has rejected that idea, saying, among other things, that it would still endanger state secrets.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), with backing from other Democrats, said she's planning to introduce an amendment that would require the secret FISA court to determine the legality of letters sent by the government to telephone companies requesting access to their networks. If the court determined those letters met the legal requirements of surveillance law, and that the companies had complied with the orders in "good faith," then they'd be immune from lawsuits.

Update 12:42 p.m. PST: A key U.S. Senate panel on Thursday pushed back a hotly anticipated vote on a new proposal to shield telephone and Internet companies from lawsuits alleging illicit cooperation with federal spying programs.

The Senate Judiciary Committee had planned to consider the bill, known as the FISA Amendments Act, at its morning business meeting. The lengthy measure, among other things, would effectively crush the pending lawsuits against companies like AT&T and Verizon, as well as some ongoing investigations by state utility commissions into their practices. It was already approved by a 13-2 vote recently during a closed-door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But no debate occurred and no votes were held in the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, primarily because Republican ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) said he and his colleagues hadn't had enough time to review a batch of Democratic amendments circulated Wednesday night, according to committee aides.

The plan now is to consider the bill next week instead, giving the committee members more time to review proposed amendments and, if they're lucky, work out their lingering differences.

Congressional Democrats are in somewhat of a hurry to pass a new bill to replace a temporary rewrite of federal wiretapping law--as it pertains to electronic communications between foreigners and U.S. persons--that passed in August. Many of them argue the White House-backed law, set to expire in early February, was rammed through without proper checks on executive power and poses grave constitutional concerns.

The Bush administration, backed by many Republican politicians, has made it clear that it wants that law made permanent and has also indicated it will accept nothing less than total immunity (or "amnesty," as some skeptical Democrats have taken to calling it) for any companies that allegedly cooperated with its surveillance agents in the past.

An alternative idea that's been kicking around, albeit with seemingly limited support so far, is granting "indemnity" to the companies, meaning they could still be sued, but the government--or in other words, taxpayers--would foot the bill for damages.

Specter, who made the pitch for indemnification, said on Thursday that, unlike most of his Republican colleagues, he still vehemently disagrees with complete immunity from court action. But he said he's now leaning more toward a third, related possibility: "substitution," in which government lawyers would formally take the place of the telephone company or other parties being sued in the cases. That approach would still result in taxpayer dollars being spent to defend against the claims, and the Justice Department has dismissed the idea in recent testimony to the committee.

"As I've said publicly before, I'm sympathetic to the telephone companies," Specter said, according to a transcript provided by a Republican aide. "I think they have been good citizens, and I'd like to see them not prejudiced and not harmed."

WASHINGTON--Despite demands from President Bush to shield telephone and Internet companies from surveillance-related lawsuits, key U.S. senators are reluctant to offer legal immunity. But they may force taxpayers to pick up the legal tab instead.

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the co-chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing here Wednesday that they still don't have enough information to decide whether it's wise to immunize any past assistance by telecommunications providers to a wide swath of U.S. government agencies over the last six years.

That's precisely what would happen, however, if a bill called the the FISA Amendments Act, which passed by a 13-2 vote in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee a few weeks ago, becomes law. That proposal, which has won some praise from the U.S. Department of Justice, is now being weighed by the Judiciary Committee.

Specter suggested granting "indemnification" to telephone companies who allegedly cooperated with the government's surveillance regimes in violation of federal privacy laws. That would mean lawsuits could go forward, but taxpayers would be responsible for covering any legal expenses or damage awards against the communications companies. Damages could run into the tens of billions of dollars if the suits are successful, according to Senate Intelligence committee estimates.

"If we are to close the courthouse door to some 40 litigants who are now claiming that their privacy has been invaded, it seems to me we are undercutting a major avenue of redress," Specter said.

Leahy, too, voiced reluctance toward granting blanket immunity.

"The Congress should be careful not to provide an incentive for future unlawful corporate activity by giving the impression that if corporations violate the law and disregard the rights of Americans, they will be given an after-the-fact free pass," Leahy said.

The FISA Amendments Act is the Senate's attempt to overhaul a temporary wiretapping law called the Protect America Act, which was hurriedly passed by Congress in August. That bill broadened the Bush administration's ability to spy on foreign communications routed through the United States without a warrant, which the bill's primarily Democratic critics argue threatens Americans' civil liberties.

The existing law, set to expire on February 1, granted legal immunity to private companies that assist the U.S. government in its electronic surveillance going forward. But the Bush administration has now threatened to veto any proposed renewal of the law that does not shield wiretapping cooperation in the past as well.

Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security at the U.S. Department of Justice, strongly discouraged politicians at Wednesday's hearing from endorsing anything but blanket immunity for the communications companies. He said protecting communications providers from lawsuits is important to national security as a whole because "every little nugget of information that comes out in the course of this litigation helps our enemies."

"Any company that assisted the government in defending our national security deserves our gratitude, not an avalanche of lawsuits," Wainstein said in written testimony.

Indemnification would also be the wrong approach, Wainstein said, because it would still require communications companies to go through the process of litigation. He argued that could potentially inflict damage to their corporate reputations--or even endanger employees working overseas if terrorists or surveillance targets catch wind of the role those companies are playing. Furthermore, he added, forcing the government to foot the companies' legal bills would be an unacceptable burden on American taxpayers.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suggested that perhaps Congress could cap the amount of damages handed out in such cases in an effort to ease the taxpayer burden. "This isn't a mistake made by the taxpayers, it's a mistake by the government," she said.

Leahy grilled Wainstein at length on why retroactive immunity is necessary at all. A report accompanying the Senate Intelligence Committee's approved bill says that at regular intervals between 2001 and early 2007, the Bush administration presented electronic communications providers with letters saying the president or the attorney general had certified the various wiretapping requests as lawful.

Given those letters, "if you feel secure in what you did, why ask for further legislation?" Leahy asked Wainstein. "Why not let the courts deal with the certifications that the president said it was legal?"

"The concern is airing out what the companies did and putting them through the cost, the litigation, the exposure, the difficulty of litigation when they were really just doing something to protect the government," replied Wainstein.

All Democrats present at the hearing questioned the idea of granting immunity, with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) growing particularly animated.

"Isn't it reasonable to say the company has a statutory obligation to protect my identity and to only give it up for a legitimate, statutorily-recognized purpose?" Durbin asked Wainstein, who responded that he thought all of the companies who have assisted the government "acted out of patriotic duty."

With the exception of Specter, most Republicans on the committee defended the Bush administration's position, asking Wainstein questions intended to tout the importance of surveilling the enemies of the United States at wartime.

"We should be bending over backward to ensure they are protected in that assistance for the national good," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he didn't think the companies should be punished for "doing what their country asked them to do," allowing those who filed lawsuits in the process to discover "everything they can discover about the most top secret program the government has."

Score one for the skeptics on the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.

Under fire from politicians citing privacy worries, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is delaying plans--previously slated to kick in Monday--to begin making detailed spy-satellite images available to a wider range of government agencies.

A Wall Street Journal report in August first revealed publicly that the agency planned on October 1 to open what it has dubbed the National Applications Office (NAO), drawing a rash of questions from politicians who complained they had been left out of the discussion. (Homeland Security has maintained, however, that it did brief congressional intelligence and appropriations committee members on the plans.)

The NAO is described as a "clearinghouse" for what the Bush administration anticipates will be a broader set of requests--particularly by law enforcement, border security and other domestic homeland security agencies--to tap into feeds from powerful satellites that have largely collected data for scientific or military purposes in the past.

Now the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee is reporting that Homeland Security won't be opening the office as scheduled after all.

That committee in September held a lengthy hearing on the topic, where several members, particularly on the Democratic side, voiced concern that Homeland Security hasn't presented a clear enough legal framework for how the program will operate and how privacy and civil liberties will be protected.

Committee leaders formally asked officials to suspend its rollout until they'd received satisfactory information in writing. Last week, they went a step further, asking a key committee controlling congressional spending to execute the archetypal congressional dis: denying the program funding until their questions were answered.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the Homeland Security committee, said in a statement Monday that he was pleased to hear the agency was delaying the effort's rollout. But he said so far the committee has so far encountered only "silence" in response to its requests for information and urged the agency to deliver the requested response soon.

Homeland Security department representatives didn't immediately respond to interview requests on Monday seeking further details about what happens next.

President Bush this week ventured by helicopter to the National Security Agency's Maryland headquarters, where he made a public, photographed, 6-minute plea to Congress: Make expanded Internet and phone surveillance powers permanent.

Without an extension of the "tools" provided by the Protect America Act, which is set to expire February 1, "our country will be much more vulnerable to attack," Bush said Wednesday, according to the White House's transcript of his remarks.

President Bush calls for extension of a controversial spy law at NSA headquarters on Wednesday.

(Credit: White House)

The president said Congress must heed the repeated statements by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell about the importance of the temporary new law. It effectively expanded the sort of snooping that the government can do without a court order under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by allowing warrantless surveillance of "a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." It also put the power to approve such eavesdropping for one-year periods in the hands of the attorney general and intelligence czar.

The Bush administration maintains that the changes are consistent with FISA's intent--that targeting foreign communications doesn't require a warrant--and that a warrant is still required for "targeting a person in the United States." But civil-liberties advocates argue that the government is creating a loophole to monitor Americans' e-mails and phone calls to overseas contacts without the intended court approval.

The new law also immunizes from legal liability the private companies that assist the government with surveillance going forward, but Bush repeated existing calls for making that policy retroactive as well.

"It's particularly important for Congress to provide meaningful liability protection to those companies now facing multibillion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our nation, following the 9/11 attacks," Bush said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sued AT&T over its allegedly illegal cooperation with the government, says references to the crippling liability posed by such suits suggest that the scope of the wiretapping is "massive."

"The statutory penalties for warrantless wiretapping are relatively small per person--even if AT&T was ordered to pay the maximum penalty, a few hundred illegal wiretaps would amount to less than a rounding error in the phone company's quarterly statements," EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl wrote in a recent blog entry. "If the NSA was truly limiting its spying to suspected terrorists, the potential liability would be like an annoying gnat on an elephant. So why are the companies so worried?"

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for his part, reacted politely to the president's speech this week. "The Democratic Congress will pass legislation to strengthen the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, while also respecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans," he said in a statement. "Neither the White House nor congressional Republicans should use this process to create a political wedge issue."

Earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told a Senate committee that a recent expansion of electronic snooping law helped lead to a recent trio of terror arrests in Germany.

Now he's publicly admitting that he was wrong, which may complicate the Bush administration's efforts to renew and further expand the controversial new law.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell

"The Protect America Act was urgently needed by our intelligence professionals to close critical gaps in our capabilities and permit them to more readily follow terrorist threats, such as the plot uncovered in Germany," he said in a statement issued Wednesday evening. "However, information contributing to the recent arrests was not collected under authorities provided by the Protect America Act."

The Protect America Act is the name of Congress' "update" last month to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The measure broadened the National Security Agency's power to eavesdrop on phone calls, e-mail messages and other Internet traffic with limited court oversight. It also shields from court action private companies, such as telecommunications firms, that assist government spies. The Bush administration is now lobbying for retroactive immunity as well.

McConnell's backtracking arrived under pressure from U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, who sent a letter to the spy chief on Tuesday that deemed his statement "at odds with information I have received."

"While revising FISA may provide a tool that could enhance future operations, it was not in play in the Germany case," Reyes wrote, citing information from senior U.S. officials. "In fact, FISA, which you repeatedly claim is 'outdated,' was precisely the tool that helped disrupt this plot."

The intelligence director's flub could make it more difficult for the Bush administration to persuade Congress that the temporary law, currently set to expire in about five months, should be expanded and made permanent. After all, one major argument lodged by opponents of the changes is that the updates sought by the Bush administration are a needless addition that could trample on civil liberties.

The topic is likely to come up next Tuesday, when McConnell is supposed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee. As they contemplate what to do about the temporary law, Congressional Democrats are still trying to squeeze out more details about the executive branch's surveillance programs. They say the administration has been refusing to cooperate so far.

WASHINGTON--A recent expansion of U.S. eavesdropping law helped lead to the high-profile arrest of three terrorism suspects in Germany last week, the nation's intelligence director told senators on Monday.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell credited Congress's much-criticized update of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last month with making "significant contributions" that ultimately allowed the U.S. government to aid German investigators. The apprehensions targeted what were described as Islamic militants plotting attacks against sites regularly visited by Americans.

McConnell spoke at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing here, which was designed to assess threats against the United States and the state of the government's various antiterrorism operations on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Alongside him were Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, National Counterterrorism Center head John Redd and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

The top intelligence coordinator warned senators that the nation will "lose 50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know what terrorists are doing" if Congress fails to enshrine permanently the legal changes, which broadened the National Security Agency's power to eavesdrop on phone calls, e-mail messages and other Internet traffic with limited court oversight.

The controversial new law, which also shields from court action private companies--such as telecommunications firms--that aid in government surveillance going forward, was set to expire six months after its passage. McConnell made a pitch Monday not only for extending the current law but for adding a provision that would grant retroactive immunity to the private sector, which has been the subject of a number of high-profile lawsuits currently pending in federal court.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have threatened to hold off on renewing or further expanding the law until they've been given more information about how the Bush administration's various surveillance programs work. But, perhaps in an attempt to appear tough on terrorists on the eve of an emotional anniversary, there was no such talk on Monday.

"That is very compelling testimony," Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Ct.), the committee's chairman, told McConnell after he offered up his assessment of the law's helpfulness in terror cases. He and his colleagues from both parties repeatedly praised the four administration officials for what they perceived as vital service to the country.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), said he, too, was "encouraged to hear" that the so-called Protect America Act had helped in the German case, adding that he had "taken a fair amount of flak from folks concerned about...abuses of civil liberties" prompted by the legislation. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Cato Institute have argued that the law was a result of fear-mongering by the Bush administration and unjustifiably expanded the government's authority to engage in warrantless wiretapping.

"Any flak you received was wholly undeserved," Lieberman said.